The woman who drove the fundraiser supplies arrives at Hawthorn House on Tuesday carrying a cardboard tray of empty jam jars.
“I’m not here about the police,” she says immediately.
“Good morning to you too,” Agnes says.
The woman is Dorothy Fisk, retired from the post office and apparently still responsible for the safe delivery of anything nobody else wants to carry. She puts the jars on the table and gives me the look people use when they have heard about you from someone who disapproves of your choices.
“Marina said you needed names.”
“I gave the list to the detective.”
“Well, she can have mine. I drove two loads. I didn’t bake a thing. My oven thermostat has been wrong since Easter and I refuse to reward it with electricity.”
Agnes takes the jars to the sink. “You’ve been refusing to repair it for five months.”
“Exactly. It’s a principle now.”
I give Dorothy Davenport’s number and tell her the detective would prefer her own account. She calls from the porch while I put the kettle on. Through the window I can see her gesturing with the phone, apparently arguing about the distinction between a van and a large car.
When she returns, she looks satisfied.
“Thursday morning. Harding will meet me at the church. I kept the mileage sheet.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until you see my handwriting.”
She stays for tea. I do not ask about the ingredients, the garage, or the boxes. The effort is exhausting. Instead I ask about the jars, and learn that there is a committee argument over whether marmalade counts as jam. Agnes’s opinion is immediate and devastating.
For ten minutes nobody in the room is a suspect or a witness. Then Dorothy looks toward George’s study.
“I was at that party,” she says.
Agnes’s spoon stops.
“I told the police before. The old investigation. I heard a raised voice outside. I thought it was someone laughing too loudly.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “You can tell Harding.”
“I will. It’s just that Marina asked me years ago, and I told her the same thing. She wrote shouting. I said it might have been laughing. She said that didn’t fit the other accounts.”
Agnes sets down her cup.
“Did you sign anything?”
“No. She read it back and changed it when I asked. I think she changed it.” Dorothy folds her napkin. “I should have asked for a copy. At the time I thought, It’s a local history project. Who is going to care how loudly somebody laughed at a party?”
I feel the urge to turn the moment into an answer. I resist it badly enough that Agnes notices.
“You can give Harding those words too,” she tells Dorothy.
After Dorothy leaves, I write down what she said. I label it secondhand and send it to Davenport, who replies that Harding will ask about the original interview.
Then I stare at the empty jam jars.
A word can make a party into an argument. A date can make a business transaction into a plan. Perhaps Marina has spent so long assembling a story that she has forgotten which parts she was given and which parts she supplied.
It does not mean she killed Victor. I say that to myself before I let any other thought follow.
At eleven, Marina calls about the jars. Dorothy told her she delivered them. I say thank you. She asks whether Dorothy had anything useful to add.
“She spoke to the detective.”
“About the fundraiser?”
“Yes.”
“And the old party?”
I look at Agnes, who is listening from the stove.
“She remembered being interviewed for the archive. Harding will ask her about it.”
There is a pause, then the sound of a drawer closing.
“Dorothy gets confused about dates.”
“She seemed clear about what she wanted to say.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
Another pause. I have never noticed how often our conversations move forward because I fill them.
“Was there something else?” Marina asks.
“No.”
“Right. Tell Agnes I’ll bring the tin back when I’ve sorted the cards.”
She hangs up. I put the phone on the table.
“What?” Agnes asks.
“I didn’t say she’d questioned the transcript.”
“Perhaps Dorothy told her.”
“Perhaps.”
It is a small uncertainty. There are perfectly ordinary explanations for it. I write it down anyway, beneath Dorothy’s account, and put the page away.
In the afternoon a delivery arrives from the commercial kitchen cooperative in Portland. Not food: a flyer, forwarded with a note from a supplier I used to know. They have counter space coming available in October. Someone has written my name at the top and a question mark beside it.
I read it twice. The equipment list is better than the one I had at Daly Bread. A shared proofing cabinet. Refrigeration I would not have to repair alone. A window onto a street I know.
For a moment I am back in Portland, unlocking a door before dawn, knowing every ingredient on every shelf. Before Ryan. Before I learned how little I understood about the part of the bakery that existed on paper.
Agnes finds me holding the flyer.
“An offer?”
“An invitation to apply. Probably sent to every baker in three counties.”
“But it came to you.”
I turn it over. “I’m not leaving.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know. I just—”
“You don’t owe me an answer to a question nobody has asked.”
She picks up a stack of clean cloths and leaves me with it. Her restraint makes it possible to read the equipment list again without feeling as if I am betraying her.
I call the number, ask about terms, and request information. No commitment. No declaration that I have found my future. Just questions, written down with the answers.
When I return to the kitchen, Agnes is labeling the marmalade jars. Dorothy has won the classification argument by leaving us a label that says preserves.
“What did they say?”
“That I should send figures if I’m interested.”
“Then send figures.”
“I’d need my old supplier records.”
“Ask for them.”
The simplicity of it startles me. I have been waiting for someone to say that wanting a choice means I am ungrateful for the one I have.
Instead Agnes hands me a jar and tells me my label is crooked.
At five, Davenport calls to acknowledge the note about Dorothy. She asks me not to discuss it with Marina further. I admit I already took her call and repeat the exchange.
“Did you tell her anything about the biscuit markings?”
“No.”
“Good. Leave that with us.”
“Is the fundraiser list helping?”
“It broadens access. That matters. It doesn’t point to one person by itself.”
I almost ask whether she still thinks Dale did it. Then I look at the flyer from Portland beside the booking ledger. Two documents describing possible futures, neither of them deciding one.
“Tell me if you need something I can actually answer,” I say.
“I will.”
After dinner, I take my notebook upstairs. On the first page I have written Dale’s name in capital letters. It looks less like a question than an instruction.
I turn to a clean page and write Dorothy’s name in ordinary handwriting. Beneath it I list what she said, who heard it, and who will check it. The page contains no arrows.
I leave room at the bottom.